People Across America Are Waking Up to the Effects of 'Disaster Capitalism' -- a Much Better Way of Life Is Possible

In her book Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein explains how crises are used by governments to distract and frighten people so that unpopular and exploitative policies can be pushed through

It seems that now there is a different reaction disaster capitalism. Rather than disasters providing cover for the implementation of dangerous capitalist policies that lower wages and increase the wealth divide, the disasters being caused by these dangerous policies have woken the public and are leading to a more active and empowered people.

We face a triple threat of the “e”crises - in the economy, environment and energy - which are all connected, says journalist and academic Nafeez Ahmed, but rather than allowing them to overwhelm and weaken us, people are rising to the challenge of solving these crises through direct confrontation with the forces that created them and by building alternative solutions. People are taking initiative rather than waiting for leaders.

Ahmed states, “People are really hungry actually for answers, hungry for solutions, hungry for alternatives, so really this is actually an unprecedented opportunity. It’s an unprecedented crisis but it’s also an opportunity to dream-weave and say ‘well actually everything is going to go to pot over the next 20-30 years if we don’t change, so here’s an opportunity to think outside the box.’”

Enough people appear to recognize that the political system is dysfunctional and does not serve the public’s needs or interests. We saw this recently with the President’s call for an attack on Syria. Instead of falling for the media propaganda telling us that we must intervene to save Syrians from more chemical attacks, the public demanded that the President go to Congress, that there be an investigation into the facts and that the rule of law be followed. The attack was averted.

US foreign policy is rarely attacked but stopping the war on Syria shows that something may be changing. There were numerous critical reviews of President Obama’s speech to the United Nations. One of the most important was Jeremy Scahill’s analysis of a portion of the president’s speech where he openly talked about the US using military force to protect our “core interests,” a virtual admission of imperialism. Another was David Swanson’s review of the speech were he listed the top 45 lies in Obama's speech at the UN.

But the article that was most relevant to the building of the resistance movement was by David Lindorff who focused on the president telling the world that the US opposes violence to suppress dissent. Lindroff pointed to the coordinated attack on the Occupy Movement, where Homeland Security and other federal agencies worked with local police to arrest more than 8,000 protesters, use pepper spray, flashbangs, clubs and fists as well as infiltration and creating internal dissension in an attempt to destroy the movement. The hypocrisy of President Obama in making this statement to the world was astounding.

Labor unrest is building and big labor needs to change to catch-up to American workers anger. There is lots of criticism of big labor for its ties to the Democratic Party and cautious lack of activism, but there are some good signs in labor as well. United Students Against Sweatshops which has been winning victories, is allying with the AFL-CIO. Our hope is the students pull the AFL-CIO toward more activism.

On the bright side, as people speak-up, mobilize and take action not only is there a growing movement but the power structure is being divided. Divisions are occurring in the Democratic Party where some are being pulled away from Obama’s pro-Wall Street, market-based policies that undermine the social infrastructure.

We hope that trend will continue, especially with regard to the mother of all neo-liberal policies, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that has been negotiated in secret for more than three years. This is a rigged corporate trade agreement (falsely called “free trade” for marketing purposes) that will do very little to get the economy going but will add to many of the mistaken market policies that hinder the economy and make it unfair. A study published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research made some amazing findings about the TPP: (1) the impact on economic growth will be almost nothing, only a .1% increase in the GDP, but (2) the impact on most Americans will be negative with 90% of workers seeing their wages decline. The TPP will add to the decline of the middle class, race to the bottom in wages and continue the expansion of the wealth divide.

As it comes down to the wire – we expect a push by the President for Congress to grant him Fast Track (Trade Promotion Authority) so that he can sign it before Congressional review – resistance to the TPP is growing. In Maine, where the state House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution opposing “Fast Track,” Rep. Sharon Anglin Treat sees the a broad, bi-partisan opposition developing. The OWS made the TPP a focus of its anniversary protest with Adam Weissman of Occupy Trade Justice describing it as the “anti-Occupy” agreement, “a 1% power grab.”

Opposition to the TPP is going to continue to grow as more of the secret agreement becomes public knowledge. This week information about the impact of the TPP on two of the hottest environmental issues – hydro-fracking and tar sands – came out. The TPP could allow an end run by the oil and gas industry around local opposition to fracking and gas exports. And, the US Trade Rep, Mike Froman, is pushing less regulation of the already inadequately regulated tar sands industry.

A strong environmental movement that is independent of the corporate political parties is critical to addressing climate change effectively. Naomi Klein is seeing divisions between the Big Green environmental groups and the grassroots environmental groups; indeed, she says the Big Greens may be more damaging than the climate deniers. And, the corrupt linkage between some Green groups and the Democrats can be seen in the Blue Green Alliance that is giving the environmentally-damaging governor of California an award, at which there will be protests. In fact, the Big Greens and the Democratic Party are critical parts of the power structure that keeps the status quo in place. For the popular resistance movement to be successful we need to divide those groups and pull people from them into the movement.

This video produced by the Post Carbon Institute explains why our current way of life cannot continue. Access to fossil fuels is declining and their extraction increasingly destructive. It requires us to change our way of living but this can be a positive transformation. The current crises are activating more of us and are forcing us to work together to create new solutions, such as the ones described by Gar Alperovitz in Ten things You Can Do to Democratize the Economy. In fact, it is already happening. Cooperatives employ more people than multinational corporations. Join us. People are taking up the challenge. It is time for the people to lead and create the kind of world we want to live in.